This account is pending registration confirmation. Please click on the link within the confirmation email previously sent you to complete registration.Need a new registration confirmation email? Click here

Dow Books 10-Day Winning Streak as S&P Nears All-Time High

NEW YORK (
TheStreet) -- The
Dow Jones Industrial Average posted its tenth-straight winning session for the first time since 1996, and the
S&P 500 neared its all-time high on Thursday after a drop in last week's jobless claims bolstered confidence in the world's largest economy.

The
S&P 500 climbed 0.56% to 1,563.25, to inch within 2 points of its record closing level of 1,565.15 reached in October 2007. The
Nasdaq closed up 0.43% to 3,258.93.

"Here it is, 2013, and basically the question I would have is: what took so long?" said Doug Cote, chief market strategist at ING Investment Management U.S., when asked about the S&P 500 nearing its all-time highs on Thursday. "It's a glaring case of why you should own other asset classes other than the big, mega-cap indices, because the smaller cousins are trouncing it."

Among the top performers on the S&P 500 were a trio of energy companies that spiked higher on rising natural gas prices. Shares of
WPX Energy(WPX) jumped 4.9% to $16.79,
Chesapeake Energy(CHK) gained 5.2% to $22.52 and shares of
Noble Energy(NBL) climbed 1.5% to $115.98.

Crude traded in New York gained 51 cents to settle at $93.03, the highest settlement price since Feb. 25.

The equities rally, which began on March 1 punctuated by positive economic data, has given Washington policymakers reason to cheer, said Paul Pagnato, managing director and partner at Hightower's Pagnato-Karp Group, which oversees more than $2 billion in client assets.

The rally "gives confidence that what our federal banking system and our government has done as well as the rest of the world's intervention, is working,'' Pagnato told
TheStreet in interview on March 11.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that the number of people who have filed to receive unemployment insurance benefits fell by 10,000 to 332,000 in the week ended March 9 from an upwardly revised 342,000 the prior week. Economists, on average, were expecting initial jobless claims of 350,000.

Men's Wearhouse(MW - Get Report) surged 19% to $34.62 after the Houston-based retailer said it was exploring the sale of its K&G operations, which sells clothing for men, women and children. Men's Wearhouse hired Jefferies & Co. to evaluate strategic alternatives for K&G.

Chevron(CVX) shares were rising 1.4% to $120, hitting a new 52-week high Thursday after a number of analysts on Wednesday expressed confidence in the ability of the U.S.' second largest oil company to achieve ambitious production and development goals following its analyst conference on Tuesday.

eBay (EBAY - Get Report) shares were popping 1.6% to $51.80 after Evercore Partners analyst Ken Sena upgraded the stock to "overweight" from "equal-weight" in reaction to a selloff Wednesday of eBay shares on worries that the company's online payments service unit PayPal would be hurt by
Mastercard's (MA) plan to raise fees on digital wallet transactions.

Sena said in a client note that the selloff was overdone as the impact on the company should be less than 50 basis points of PayPal's margin, which eBay can easily cope with.

Amazon(AMZN) shares were sliding 3.4% to $265.70 after
JPMorgan cut its view on the stock to "neutral" from "overweight" and lowered its price target to $300 from $333. JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth said in an investor report that the online retailer could see "more material deceleration" in gross profit growth to 31% in 2013.

E-Trade Financial(ETFC) was dropping 8.2% to $10.85 after its biggest shareholder, Citadel Equity Fund Ltd., said it plans to sell its entire position of 27.4 million shares in the company. Citadel owns a 9.6% stake in E-Trade.

The benchmark 10-year Treasury was incrementally higher, slightly diluting the yield to 2.022%. The dollar was shedding 0.41%, according to the
U.S. dollar index.

The FTSE 100 in London added 0.74% and the DAX in Germany gained 1.1% as European Union leaders began a two-day summit in Brussels. Discussions will include a bailout for Cyprus and easing austerity measures to battle the recession and rapidly increasing joblessness in southern Europe, which has become a much more immediate and urgent concern than the region's debt crisis.

Product Features:

To begin commenting right away, you can log in below using your Disqus, Facebook, Twitter, OpenID or Yahoo login credentials. Alternatively, you can post a comment as a "guest" just by entering an email address. Your use of the commenting tool is subject to multiple terms of service/use and privacy policies - see here for more details.